I am writing on Tuesday morning. Today's papers in Brazil and the world
are reporting still another change of nuance in the overall picture of the
situation in Poland. The success of the various strike movements has
forced the Communist Party there to sweep out the Premier. In view of the
liberalizing agitation among Polish workers, Russia appears apprehensive,
unhappy, and therefore, threatening. The news is giving more emphasis to
the KOR movement, one of more defined anti-communist hues hues than
Walesa's Solidarity (that's not at all difficult). There are rumors that
the United States will toughen its attitude. So the hitherto dubious
symptoms of tension between Warsaw and Moscow and consequently between
Moscow and Washington are becoming more meaningful.

How is this panorama going to be a few days from now? While in this
feminist era, the words of the well-known Italian play "La donna è mobile
qual piuma al vento. Muda d'accento e di pensiero" may sound rather out of
date, they still apply perfectly well to politics.

Indeed, how capriciously the course of events has been changing on the
five continents and even inside that power, which by its very nature is
nobly and majestically stable, the Holy Church! In this world which seems
continuously given up to that mysterious process of autodemolition of the
Church spoken of by Paul VI, in this world that plans excessively, builds
hastily, and staggers under the weight of the ruins of what it has built,
there is only one thing that keeps somberly on the way to its malign end.
It is international communism. It ceases not even for an instant to use
all its capacity, all its cunning, all its strength, all its dexterity,
all its propaganda, bluffs, and blackmail to achieve world domination.

Some skeptical reader may object that Russia and its satellites lack the
military and economic means to successfully oppose the West. He may say
that the world behind the Iron Curtain is being eaten up by opposition
movements that deprive it of any possibility of victory. All of this is
probably true. But who says that that is where Russian power lies? If
communism inexorably gained ground during the period 1945-1980, it was due
to the most modern and efficacious of weapons: revolutionary psychological
warfare. The policy of the extended hand, peaceful coexistence, political
pragmatism, useful innocents, the dropping of ideological barriers, fellow
travelers, salami tactics, ping pong diplomacy, danger of nuclear
hecatomb, Yugoslavian-style socialism, neutrality between two systems, and
detente are only some of the most notable artifices or slogans of the
vast, worldwide psychological offensive that Russia has been developing in
a West that is boobified, soft, inert, in a word, psycho-destroyed.

Here is a symptom of this psycho-destruction: If Russia is really so weak,
why not let her fall? If this weak and hungry nation commits acts of
aggression, why give it credits, send it foodstuffs, industrialize it
while at the same time you retreat before every one of its onslaughts? The
inexplicable conduct of the West, which the multitudes enslaved by
propaganda watch like a flock of sheep has reduced us to the plight of
dwarfs in retreat. This is the illogical and undignified posture to which
Soviet psychological warfare has brought us. The strength of communism may
not be so great behind the Iron Curtain, but on this side of the Curtain,
it is immense, monumental, overwhelming.

This is the great Russian victory. However weak Russia may be, the entire
West in its spirit — in this point led by the "Catholic left"—is weaker
than she is.

In the Polish question—produced by internal factors including the
socio-economic failure of communism—there is also Poland's noble,
obstinacy in maintaining its national identity. The more Russia lacks
military power, the more we must admit as probable that it will employ its
best resources of revolutionary psychological warfare such as propaganda,
false leaderships, the adulteration of authentic movements, camouflage,
bluffs, confusion, intrigue, and so on, to temporize with the internal
outbursts of anti-communism in order to divide, undermine and exhaust
them. In short, to do with them what Russia has been doing so successfully
in the Free World.

However, international communism's leaders would not be themselves if they
failed at the same time to take advantage of all the chaos fabricated in
Poland to frighten the West with the risk of a nuclear hecatomb.

This is a twofold maneuver of a colossal range, a maneuver whose link
consists in a new formula: the Polish model. It is one more artifice to be
added to the long list we mentioned.

Am I making an affirmation or raising a hypothesis? To a certain extent it
is an affirmation, and to some degree a hypothesis; for both are
indispensable ingredients of any political forecast.

In these sad days, people with good noses are much more numerous on the
left than on the right. So while on the left many have already figured out
what convergence will mean, on the right many pleasant, respectable
people, but whose noses are not so keen, have perceived nothing. Maybe
I'll address the matter some day.

While reflecting on this subject my attention also turns to other fields.
I am paging through foreign newspapers looking for information about
something that I wish the Brazilian press would give much more coverage
to: the American New Right.